I really enjoy the Insider blogs over at The Hockey News website, because they give glimpses into what professional managers, agents and players are thinking. Personally, I find the articles written by agents to be the most useful and informative, but the ones written by ex-general managers Jay Feaster and Mike Smith can be just as interesting.
Smith served as the general manager of both the Winnipeg Jets and Chicago Blackhawks, multiple editions of Team USA, and as an associate G.M. with the Toronto Maple Leafs (in the article we’ll consider, he takes credit for signing Curtis Joseph in the latter role). His article revolves around the notion that good goaltending is an important ingredient in good teams, a fairly mundane argument that should have made it easy for him to crank out a column that made a certain amount of sense even if he wasn’t at his best.
Incredibly, he produced this instead.
In the column, Mike Smith makes an assortment of dubious claims about Patrick Roy, claims that Tyler Dellow does a good job of lampooning. After showing that Patrick Roy never passed through the draft unselected (the cutoff date is September 15, which is why Roy and another unheralded player born at the same time went in 1984 instead of 1983), Dellow quickly reviews Smith’s claim that he had Roy targeted as the Jets’ third round pick, only to have his G.M. trade the pick away. The problem with that claim?
Picard was traded to Winnipeg on November 4, 1983. If Smith’s story means anything, the Jets had apparently already developed their draft list to the point that they were targeting specific players for specific draft picks. In November.
In other words, either the Jets knew their exact selection with the 51st overall pick nearly a full year before the draft, or Mike Smith is taking some liberties with the truth. Given that his memory has already been wrong once in this article with respect to Patrick Roy, I’d strongly suggest the latter.
The really sad thing is that this isn’t even the low water mark for Smith’s writing in this article. That comes later.
The top 10 clubs all have goalies ranked in the top 10 [in wins] except for Washington’s Theodore, who is 18th. Don’t be surprised if GM George McPhee trades for a goalie by the deadline. The Caps are definite Cup contenders. Right now they have average goaltending. An upgrade is needed if they want to win the Cup.
How about the teams in the hunt for the lottery pick: Carolina’s Cam Ward is 24th, Toronto’s Jonas Gustavsson is 38th and Edmonton’s Nikolai Khabibulin is 44th and out for the season.
Smith’s argument is as follows: Good teams (i.e. teams with a lot of wins) have good goalies (i.e. goalies with a lot of wins). Meanwhile bad teams (i.e. teams with few wins) have bad goalies (i.e. goalies with few wins).
Is it possible for a goalie on a team with very few wins to have a lot of wins? No! Is it possible for a goalie who plays a lot for a team with a lot of wins to have very few wins? Again, no! Smith’s argument boils down to the simple idea that teams with lots of wins have goalies with lots of wins.
I thought the last line of Dellow’s post on this article summed up the situation perfectly:
[Smith] was once a highly paid hockey executive.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc… reading stories like these just makes it more and more terrifying when fans throw out, ‘Hey, he’s a GM, he must know something!’ as an excuse for bad moves.
Reading him and Feaster at THN this year has been morbidly fascinating.
You know, as I was reading that article I thought it was dumb. But I actually didn’t realize it was THAT dumb; the Patrick Roy part went over my head somehow. The part where Smith says that teams needs starting goaltenders with wins in order to win games, though? That was poetry. I mean, who’d have thought that the starters on teams with the most wins would be among the league leaders in wins?
And back when I was a kid that collected hockey cards, I used to think it was really neat that Mario Lemieux and Patrick Roy were born on the same day in the same province.
Wait a minute this guy was placed in charge of actual teams? No wonder the Jets moved… haha.. Correct me if I’m wrong but don’t the Caps have Varlamov I know he hasn’t played any NHL hockey since his injury but did he really fall off the face of the earth. His numbers were fantastic when he was playing and he played great in last year’s playoffs so as to why the caps need a goalie when they have him is beyond me… It’s very scary to think people like him get to be GM’s there’s people that blog on this site that have more hockey sense then Smith and some of the other questionable GM’s in the league.
That goalie-win argument is so simple it must be brilliant! Or… not.
Neil Smith also once used a draft pick on a Russian defenceman who was old enough to be signed as a free agent.
Jon, man, you are either really good at processing information or have a lot of time on your hand! Somehow, I think the former is closer to the truth.
Keep on dishing them out, Mr. Willis, as I enjoy your writing style and ideas brought on by your columns.
I guess all the Oilers need in Brodeur in net.
Well, Mark, Brodeour in net and some forwards that can score. Their defenders aren’t all that bad, along with 3rd and 4th forward lines.
Redon: I don’t know, the entire forward corps is full of holes, the centre ice depth chart is raw and has one complete player (and he’s overpaid) while the back end is unbalanced skillwise but has some pieces.
The whole team is horribly unbalanced.